ping

Ping

the sound made by a bullet striking something sharply
any sound somewhat similar to this, as an engine knocking, a sonar echo, etc.

Origin of ping

echoic

to make or cause to make such a sound

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ping

noun

A sharp, high-pitched sound, as that made by a bullet striking metal.
A protocol that sends a message to another computer and waits for acknowledgment, often used to check if another computer on a network is reachable.
See knock.

verb

pinged, ping·ing, pings

verb

intransitive

To make a sharp, high-pitched, metallic sound.

verb

transitive

To test the connectivity of (a computer) to a network by using the ping protocol: To ping your computer, at the DOS prompt type “ping” and then your IP address.
Informal To reach out to (someone), as by text message or email, to establish or maintain communication: Ping me when you get home safely.

Origin of ping

Imitative Noun, sense 2, so called by American programmer Michael Muuss (1958-2000), author of the original protocol code, in reference to sonar pings

Ping

A river, about 565 km (350 mi) long, of western Thailand. It is a major tributary of the Chao Phraya.

THE AMERICAN HERITAGE® DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, FIFTH EDITION by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries. Copyright © 2016, 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Noun

(plural pings)

A high-pitched, short and somewhat sharp sound.
My car used to make an odd ping, but after the last oil change it went away.
(submarine navigation) A pulse of high-pitched or ultrasonic sound whose echoes provide information about nearby objects and vessels.
The submarine sent out a ping and got an echo from a battleship.
(networking) A packet which a remote host is expected to echo, thus indicating its presence.
The network is overloaded from all the pings going out.
(text messaging, Internet) An email or other message sent requesting acknowledgement.
I sent a ping to the insurance company to see if they received our claim.

Verb

(third-person singular simple present pings, present participle pinging, simple past and past participle pinged)

To make a high-pitched, short and somewhat sharp sound.
My car was pinging until my last oil change.
(submarine navigation) To emit a signal and then listen for its echo in order to detect objects.
(networking) To send a packet in order to determine whether a host is present, particularly by use of the ping utility.
I'm pinging their server.
The server pings its affiliates periodically.
(networking) To send a network packet to another host and receive an acknowledgement in return.
I can't ping their server: perhaps it's been switched off.
To send an email or other message to someone in hopes of eliciting a response.
I'll ping the insurance company again to see if they've received our claim.
(colloquial) To flick.
I pinged the crumb off the table with my finger.
(colloquial, sports, intransitive) To bounce.
The ball pinged off the wall and came hurtling back.
(colloquial, sports) To cause something to bounce.

Origin

Onomatopoeic.

English Wiktionary. Available under CC-BY-SA license.

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ping - Computer Definition

A utility used to test a path from one host computer to another across an IP-based network in what is essentially a command to echo the packet from the remote host back to the originating host. Ping is an application of the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP). Ping was invented by Mike Muuss of the Army Research Laboratory in 1983 to diagnose an IP network problem. Muuss had done a considerable amount of work in college on sonar and radar modeling and was inspired by the principle of echo location. He named the utility after the sound that sonar makes when a signal returns.A lot of people think that ping is an acronym for Packet INternet Groper. According to Muuss, "packet internet groper" is a backronym reverse-engineered by Dr. David L. Mills. Note: Mills warns people that the clock on his wall runs backwards. I guess that explains it. See also acronym, backronym, host, ICMP, IP, radar, sonar, and utility.
Slang for bouncing something off someone, i.e., asking someone a question, as in "Hold on just a minute while I ping Margaret and see if she'd like to join us."

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(1) See also PNG, ping service, blog ping and iTunes Ping.

(2) A signal from an airplane's black box. See pinger.

(3) (Packet INternet Groper) An Internet utility used to determine whether a particular IP address is reachable online by sending out a packet and waiting for a response. Ping is used to test and debug a network as well as see if a user or server is online. Are You There? "Can you ping the server?" means typing ping xx.xx.xx.xx at the command line. The xx's are the four numbers in the dotted decimal IP address used to identify IP clients and servers. If the request times out, the address cannot be reached. A ping utility also typically supports DNS name resolution, and the domain name may be used. For example, ping www.computerlanguage.com would yield the same results as typing in the correct numeric address. See IP address, ICMP and DNS.

Ping Me!

The term was coined when submarines first used sonar to detect enemy ships. A pinging sound was heard in the headset when a signal reflected back from an object in the water. Ping is geekspeak for "call" or "get in touch." "Ping me at home" means "call me at home." It is also used to mean sending or transmitting a short burst of data; for example, "the GPS transmitter pings the satellite every few seconds."

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